Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday June 09, 2008 @06:55PM
from the springs-eternal dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Last H.O.P.E. ('Hackers on Planet Earth') Conference is set for July 18-20, 2008, at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. The organizers have announced their supplemental speaker list, adding on to the initial list. Topics will include 'Crafting a Security-Enhanced Wikipedia,' 'VoIP (in)security: Italians Do It Better,' 'AntiSocial Networking: Vulnerabilities in Social Nets,' 'SWF and the Malware Tragedy,' 'Simulating the Universe on Supercomputers,' and my personal favorite, 'RIAA Litigations: How the Tech Community Can Help.'"

New York. Across the street from MSG.
Also known as Hotel BedBug for their recent outbreak of bedbugs.
Quite possibly the WORST hotel in midtown. Sure the lobby looks nice, but the rooms are hell. That POS should be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.

That is perfectly true, but just because you want something to be legal doesn't make it right. Do you think that authors shouldn't be able to try to enforce the copyright on their books, or artists shouldn't be able to enforce copyright on their digital photos? Suddenly just because you can copy something with trivial effort, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Don't get me wrong, I've done it too, but if I like a band then I will buy their album because they deserve recognition and support. All too m

i agree, if you like something... give the popper respects. for example, i heard about this DJ called "nick skitz" so i downloaded his stuff, LOVED it then went out and bought all his CDs (~30.) but then that brigs us to the the HUGE percentage that the labels get.

but it's when copy right is abused to hinder development (patents) or used for censorship (church of scientology) that i (and others) say "fuck this, lets do what needs to be done"

When it comes to that, sure. It still doesn't get away from the fact that copying music when the copyright belongs to someone else is unethical.. thought the fact that the labels screw the artists over is also unethical, it's a dilemma. Personally I would prefer if all artists pulled a Radiohead and put their stuff up online or setup their own label, then you know that most of the money is going to the artist (and the rest pays the hosting bills/CD pressing). For lesser known/funded bands that kind of invol

is when they auction off the attendees' credit cards, passports, and drivers' licenses. As the goods are previewed on a 60" plasma TV, generally you hear backhanded compliments along the lines of "hey, that's got a better picture of me than the real thing."

For those of you that can't attend, there will be an internet radio station (which I am helping put together) from and about the conference (details here: http://radio.hope.net/ [hope.net] ), with interviews and news and other bits from the con.

Aside from the radio station, there will be other projects, such as the NOC NOC (none of our concern network operations center, a coat check for servers), and the Attendee Metadata project, which seeks to use 2.4GHz OpenBeacon tags to track all the attendees. http://www.thelasthope.org/projects.php#rfid [thelasthope.org] They need some volunteers for this project, actually, so if you have some microcontroller skills, drop them a line at projects at hope.net

This looks like it will be a great conference, I'm looking forward to attending.

Set up honeypots to entrap the RIAA into sending bogus notices. Thoroughly document this and make the results available to those defending themselves against RIAA suits (and to those pursuing class action suits against the RIAA).

Also try to trick them into breaking into and/or DOSing bittorent trackers (preferably ones not being used to infringe any RIAA copyrights).

Yeah, that's the one. For some odd reason it makes more sense to me that the last extension should be honored, not the first. I'm too used to tarred gzips where the final extension (we'll disregard magic numbers for the moment) is the significant one.

On the other hand, I keep seeing people (on their forum) not explicitly saying that it *isnt* the last HOPE. There was some speculation that perhaps this is the final HOPE at the current digs/location, but I couldn't get any firm details on that front. Any additional info would be useful.

Right before The Last HOPE was announced, Vornado Realty Trust announced that they were tearing down the Hotel Pennsylvania before 2010 (when the next HOPE presumably would be). While there are certainly other venues in NYC, finding one the size of the space HOPE has in the Hotel Penn at a price that HOPE could be under $100 has appeared pretty hopeless.

It's just a jump to the left...
And a damned bad editor...
I mean really...I am disappointed with the hacking community now big time. Master time travel and all you can come up with is hold a conference complaining about things? Paradox be damned its worth it to try and fix the unmitigated disasters in freedom that have been going on the last 20 years or so.

I have tried to come up with a decent answer witty or not but I just can't. I have long been of the belief that the spread of the Roman empire is ultimately what screwed civilization up in the long term (At least western).

And what will it be called ? "The Future Hope" ? "The Next Hope" ? "The Hope Strikes Back" ? "The Once and Future Hope" ? "Infinite Hope" ?But seriously, now that Hotel Pennsylvannia will be turned into millionaire's housing, maybe this thing can be moved to a cheaper and more accessible part of the country. Especially in light of the economy, we should focus on a place that is central and is a big Greyhound hub. Maybe a place where there are a lot of urban ruins, and it would be really cheap to rent s

But seriously, now that Hotel Pennsylvannia will be turned into millionaire's housing, maybe this thing can be moved to a cheaper and more accessible part of the country. Especially in light of the economy, we should focus on a place that is central and is a big Greyhound hub. Having everyone all camp out might be a bit of a stretch,

So it's not cheap, but more accessible and more of a Greyhound hub than NYC? Does such a place actually exist? NY has 3+ airports, good connections by bus and train and is central for the East Coast (which has half of the US population). Even the center of US population is right around the Mississippi.

Perhaps some people could get together to organize a complementary conference, to be held in January (cheaper travel and most time separation from the real Hope). I suggest we put it in some place like Albequerque or Los Cruces, which might be bearable at that time of year, and is generally cheap.

There are alot of hacker conferences in the US other than Defcon (Las Vegas) and HOPE (although those are the two biggest). Off the top of my head there is also Summercon (Atlanta), Notacon (Cleveland), Sch

If my company is making me choose 1 conference, should I choose HOPE or DEFCON? HOPE seems less expensive and has more "mainstream" keynote speakers, but DEFCON seems to have much MUCH more substance. Any tips for someone who has not attended either and must choose?

To get a feel for what actually goes on at HOPE panels, you could go to some of the past HOPE sites (all liked from HOPE's wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org]) and check out the freely available MP3s of all the talks which were given.

Ted: Bill?
Bill: yes Ted?
Ted: We should collect that socrates dude and totally travel back in time to this most excellent party.
Bill: totally Ted. We should grab Rufus too!
Ted: Bill, this is the Last HOPE
Bill: Bogus!